Brendan McDonough will always remember the final words he exchanged with his friend and firefighting mentor Eric Marsh. “Catch you later,” McDonough said. “This side or the other, brother,” replied Marsh with a smile. At the time “I thought nothing of it,” McDonough later wrote in his 2016 memoir. “It was an everyday thing to say.”

That day, June 30, 2013, would lead to the greatest loss of firefighters in the United States since 9/11. The Yarnell